Another day, another homebirth death.
A Perth newborn has died after an at-home birth with only a doula to support the mother ended in tragedy.
The girl was born Saturday about 3am inside a Wattle Grove home, however she became stuck during labour and wasn’t breathing when she arrived.
…[T]he father of the child began CPR as the doula did not know how to resuscitate the newborn.
St John Ambulance paramedics arrived at the scene 10 minutes after receiving the triple-zero call and rushed the baby to St John of God Midland.
She was transferred to Perth Children’s Hospital but could not be saved.
Yet another death that is not merely a tragedy but also a tragic irony. Why? Because in attempting to give birth “as nature intended” homebirth and freebirth advocates have missed nature’s most critical “intention”: that mothers — human and higher animal — will do whatever it takes to protect their infants.
For “Nature” success is measured by children who live to reproduce, the “survival of the fittest.” And the fittest are those who live, not those born without medical assistance.
Evolution doesn’t care one whit about the process of survival, it only cares about the outcome. Evolution doesn’t care whether a particular animal has black fur or white fur. It rewards the color that offers the best camouflage for the particular environment in which the animal lives. In our current environment, with easy access to technology, evolution rewards those who use that technology to survive. Women who reject lifesaving technology in order to recapitulate birth in nature aren’t winners; they haven’t achieved anything. If their babies die, they are losers.
Evolution doesn’t care about a vaginal birth; it doesn’t care about birth without pain medication; it certainly doesn’t care about a vaginal birth after a previous C-section. It cares about one and only one thing: whether the baby survives.
Women who let their babies die for lack of obstetric interventions at homebirth or unassisted birth DIDN’T do what “nature intended”; they did the exact opposite. They aren’t successful; they’re failures.
And they’re not responding to natural instincts; they’re defying them. Nearly every large female mammal will defend the lives of her offspring to the death. Everyone knows that there is no more dangerous animal than the mother who feels that her brood is threatened.
The woman who consents to a C-section for fetal distress is acting on that primal instinct. She is willing to let herself be cut open if that gives her baby a better chance of survival. The woman who chooses homebirth specifically to recapitulate birth in nature is acting AGAINST that primal instinct. She is more interested in herself and her bragging rights than in the baby’s life.
That’s not merely deadly; it’s shockingly UNnatural.
